A bizarre union of Corpus technology and Infested biology, this automatic rifle can also deploy an irradiated airborne infested mass. Further field testing is required to fully understand the potential of this weapon.

The Mutalist Quanta is an Infested fused Quanta with a rapid-fire function in place of the Quanta's continuous fire feature. Like its normal version, the Mutalist Quanta has a secondary fire function which projects floating masses, although ones from this weapon are composed of infested tissues, that proc Radiation on contact with enemies and bullets.

Notes

Requires a fairly large amount of resources, including 5 Mutagen Masses, 15,000 Nano Spores, a Forma and 80,00080,000‍ (both the blueprint and the cost of construction).

The Mutalist Quanta has two distinct and separate firing modes: the normal attack fires full-auto projectiles at enemies that deal physical damage like other Corpus weapons such as the Dera. The secondary attack, fires a slow-moving cuboid sphere that deals Radiation damage and has 100% chance to proc. The orb will travel a short distance and then expand, before exploding 9 seconds later to deal AoE damage. This sphere will bounce off solid obstacles like walls, and can be manipulated by hitting it with a melee weapon.

Shots fired at the orb will pass through and deal additional damage to enemies, similar to Electric Shield. The sphere also increases critical chance and damage, with 6.3% chance and 4.2x damage at base, receiving ~20% chance and 5-6x damage through the orb.

The secondary attack consumes 15 ammo per shot, and cannot be fired if the magazine has less than that amount of ammo or if there are already two active orbs from your gun.

If enemies come into direct contact with the orb, they will turn against other enemies in the area temporarily if the player retreats from sight, similar to Nyx's Chaos ability.This is particularly useful against large groups of enemies with Eximus units or other heavy units.

Only two orbs can be present in the map at any one time. Using Split Chamber allows for two orbs to be fired at once, but the second orb will count towards this limit.

Oddly, Mag's Bullet Attractor will create another instance of an orb if fired on it. This additional orb will be created even if two orbs are already created via Split Chamber. The instance created within the Bullet Attractor does not appear to count within the orb limit; without Split Chamber, up to 4 orbs can be created by shooting two separate orbs into the Bullet Attractor.

Mirage's Hall Of Mirrors ability creates 2 illusory copies that shoot their own weapon copies. This allows Mirage to fire up to 3 Infested orbs (4 with the original shot doubling to Split Chamber) to be fired in a wide area. This can be used to cover entire halls with orbs, increasing the chances of enemies walking into the orbs and becoming irradiated.

With both barrels rotating while firing, the weapon normally has the tendency to block the view of the user when engaging targets.

Explosion from orb also deals damage to allies, unlike other explosive weapons like the Penta and Ogris.

Heavy Caliber seems to have very little effect on the Mutalist Quanta's accuracy in-game, making it a viable option for increasing the weapon's damage output.

The innate polarity can somewhat limit elemental modding potential, thus making it a less desirable polarity for elemental modding. If you wish to focus more on elemental damage, then it is recommended to either ignore the polarity or use Forma to turn it into a more suitable polarity.

Orbs will immediately explode when impacting the following surfaces, allowing instant high damage to enemies:

Bugs

Orbs also will sometimes detonate prematurely when forced into objects, enemies, players, or other orbs.

Trivia

The word mutalist may refer to Mutualism, which is a sector in biology which refers to how two different species interact with each other where each individual benefits. Alternatively, it may simply be derived from mutate.

"muta" is a form of the Latin verb mūtāre, which means "to alter/to change".

The word Quanta is the plural for Quantum, used in Physics as a measure of the smallest minimum constituent of any object, ex. a Photon is the smallest quantity of light.

The weapon has a non-static model, the weapon will rotate when firing and the Infested growth moves at all times as well.

Oddly, the Infested part of the weapon is static in the Arsenal screen, but becomes animated in a mission.

While reloading, the Infested part of the weapon will pull the magazine out of the gun and throw it away.

This was the first weapon to repurpose the Zoom key into a separate Alternate Fire key that results in a completely different attack.

It is also the first weapon to possess a separate secondary fire mode that is not engaged via charging.

This weapon is the third hybrid weapon added in the game (incorporating both Corpus and Infested characteristics), preceded by the Orokin/Grineer Seer and the Infested/Grineer Torid.

The projectiles appear to fire from the infested growth. Since the weapon rotates, the projectiles converge in a spiraling pattern toward the player's crosshair.

Oddly enough, the result of the Infestation of the weapon resulted in the arms to rotate when firing, normal shots turned into individual energy bursts that deal physical damage opposed to electricity, and the cubes to eject partially Infested energy.

Media

Mutalist Quanta in Codex.

Four separate instances of an Infested Orb created via Bullet Attractor.